


Mésalliance

by oonaseckar



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Adoption, F/M, Gen, fostering, ward - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24857122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: Regency Downton.  Anna is a servant, and an aristocratic by-blow: when her upper-class biological father's childless second wife discovers it, she decides to welcome her into the family...
Relationships: Anna Bates/Matthew Crawley
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

Anna hurried down the back stairs with a load of laundry, none of which was required any later than six that evening. If she pulverised her hands with an extra dose of lye, she might just get it done in time. Dried and ironed might be more of a problem.

She barely noticed as the housemaid Aggie pattered up the servants' stairs as she came down, coal-scuttle in hand. "What, don't I exist, madam?" Aggie called. "High and mighty!"

"None of your cheek," Anna advised her shortly. Ruddy nerve that was, coming from a fourteen year old kitchen maid. Just because they were second cousins, didn't mean that young Aggie need get any ideas.

Mrs Hepple the housekeeper spotted Anna from the servant's hall as she scurried into the laundry room, and slipped in after her for a quick word. "Honestly, young Annie," old Hepster scolded, bosom heaving in her black serge bodice. "You know there'll be trouble if you don't have a selection of dresses ready for the young miss to choose from this evening. What's got into you? You're usually so prepared and organised. What would your mother say?"


	2. Chapter 2

Quite a lot, no doubt, Anna thought grimly. Something of this must have shown in her face, because Hepster said tartly, 'Now you know I won't hear a word said against your mother - yes, I know you didn't _say_ anything. You didn't have to. You ought to be more grateful - everything your poor mother's done for you, the way she brought you up and kept you clothed and fed after your father died.' She puffed up her impressive chest like a pouter pigeon, and nodded at Anna importantly.

If you only knew, Anna thought. But she didn't say anything to old Mrs Hepple, of whom she was quite fond. She was a good old bird in many ways. She just didn't have any idea about Anna's old mum, and what went on behind closed doors.

But she left it at that, and concentrated on getting the wash done in time. Mrs Hepple shook a minatory finger at her on leaving. 'Remember, if the young miss isn't pleased there'll be grief abounding!'


	3. Chapter 3

Anna creased her brow. 'She's not so bad, Miss Hepple. I know she wouldn't be best pleased, but I've never had any real trouble with her even when things go wrong.'

Mrs Hepple sniffed, and pursed her lips. 'That, I don't doubt. Quite the little favourite, you are. Cast-off finery and all,' she observed, casting an eye over Anna's service gown, plain enough beside the miss's old dresses, donated for her free time. 'But she makes trouble enough when she's that way out, for those of us without the pretty face and pleasing ways to sweeten her temper.'

She didn't flounce out of the room, for she was too stately and broad in the beam to do any such thing. But if she'd been twenty years younger and three stones lighter, she'd have done just that.

Still, that evening Anna was busy with a hot iron, and - just in time - had a beautiful array of gowns ready for Miss Sarah's perusal. Beautiful, delicate, in shades of lilac and green and yellow, she laid them out on Miss Sarah's bed, admiring and a little envious at the same time. 

Fresh from her bath, Miss Sarah exclaimed in pleasure at the sight of them. 'Oh, Anna, isn't the new lilac silk a joy? Do you think I ought to go for that one?'

'I couldn't say, miss,' Anna said repressively, plaiting a ribbon through her mistress's hair.


	4. Chapter 4

'Oh, be a devil, Anna - go on, essay an opinion!' Miss Sarah urged her, laughing.

'Well miss,' Anna allowed, 'the lilac's very pretty - but I favour the yellow myself. You'll look like a little star, shining, in that.'

Miss Sarah burst out laughing, 'Oh Anna, your talents are wasted as a ladies' maid - you should have been a poet.'

Anna allowed herself a wry smile. Miss Sarah wasn't to know about the journal she slept with under her pillow, nor the verses within it. Still, a ladies' maid she was, and a good one. She sent Miss Sarah down to the ball looking like half a fine lady and half a naiad or dryad fresh from Cott's Wood, which was exactly the look Miss Sarah liked to affect.


	5. Chapter 5

After supper in the servants' hall Anna tried to catch forty winks in her room, for she'd have to be up late to help Miss Sarah undress and make ready for bed. But somehow she couldn't sleep - perhaps it was Miss Sarah's idle patronage about her being a poet. She knew herself lucky in her mistress - Miss Sarah was kind and lenient, generous with presents and free time, of which she got more than her contracted share. Still it was human nature to look at the allotted fates of different souls and - well, and to wonder, at least a little, Anna thought. She wondered, sometimes, what she would do in Miss Sarah's place. With unlimited money - so it seemed, compared to Anna's eight shillings a month, anyway - and as much free time as she wanted, and piano lessons, and reading what she liked when she liked, and all the idleness the parson warned the likes of Anna about, as a mortal sin.

And there Anna caught herself up in her dissatisfied pondering, and took herself out for a walk around the kitchen garden.

Adam the gardener's boy was there, trimming the new tomatoes. He threw her one by way of greeting, and they had a companionable game of battleships on the notebook in her apron pocket. For a scrubby, pimply, pop-eyed kid, he was a nice child. Winning at battleships put him in a good temper, and his boss eye slid round to the glasshouse. 'Apricots very near ready,' he observed, apropos of nothing. 'Very near ready _indeed_.'


	6. Chapter 6

Anna was a sharp girl, and didn't need hinting at twice. 'Think I'll finish my walk. Be good, kid,' she said, and took her leave by a winding way.

She was leaning over the wall of the kitchen garden ten minutes later, savouring the scent and juices of a wonderfully ripe apricot. It was a nasty jar to have someone call up, ‘Hey! You up there! What are you eating?’

The apricot rapidly found its way into her apron pocket, and Anna assumed her most ingenuous expression. ‘Nothing, sir. Nothing, I’m sure.’

Anxiously, she peered over the mossy garden wall, getting a first look at her interrogator. He stood, one leg propped up against the grassy bank supporting the wall, as if he might take a leap and clear it at a bound. And he looked back at her.

His face was pleasantly bony and well balanced, a fine example of the golden mean and ratio. (She had been reading about it in the little book of Aristotle that the local curate had given her.) His thick fair hair was fashionably cropped, and his clothes bespoke the gentleman, but also had a hint of the artist. Even as a ladies’ maid, Anna knew something about gentlemen’s clothes.


	7. Chapter 7

His scrutiny complete, he grinned up at her. ‘You forgot the juice. Not quite the master criminal, are you?’

So Anna furtively wiped apricot traces from her mouth, and essayed a brief curtsey. ‘Sir, sorry sir, I must go now--‘

‘Oh don’t just run straight off,’ he protested. ‘I was only making a slight joke. What’s your name?’

Anna flicked a glance towards the half-open door. If old Hepster should choose to come out now, and catch her conversing with a gentleman visitor, and with apricot juice and flesh on her lips, too! ‘I’m ladies’ maid to Miss Sarah here, sir. I must go now, sir!’ And with that she made her escape, carefully not running for the cover of the servants’ quarters -- because running, under any circumstances, merited, if not a reprimand, then certainly an explanation. But, certainly walking with the utmost haste!

It was a relief to settle onto the narrow bed in her bare little room, hard as it was. Oddly enough she sank easily into sleep for the few hours she had before Miss Sarah would return, excited, wanting to talk over every aspect of the ball. Yet before she settled into sleep, an image of that gentleman's face flickered across her consciousness with strange vividity and persistence. He had had a handsome face, but that wasn’t what made it persist in her memory. He made her think of a sermon the parson had preached months ago -- something from the _Song of Solomon,_ about how lovely and kind the spirit was -- well, she couldn’t rightly remember it all. But that was what his face made her think of -- as if it was one she had known long ago, as if he was someone intimately familiar to her. She thought there was a French expression for it -- in the morning she might ask Beckles the butler. He had had a few years in a Belgian household, and considered himself an expert in all things continental.


	8. Chapter 8

The bell from Miss Sarah’s room was the usual nasty shock, five hours later. But Anna fought her way through torpor and bad temper, to pull herself up off the bed and attend her mistress. Still, Miss Sarah’s buoyant mood was infectious, and she even found herself smiling through her yawns, to hear the girl’s bubbling fountain of gossip, cautious confidences and irrepressible good humour.

‘Lots of potential husbands in the ballroom tonight, Anna,’ she observed innocently, twining her head around the better to allow Anna to wield the brush.

‘Now, Miss,…’ Anna said uncomfortably, knowing how much Sir Richard and his missis would disapprove of such frank and knowing speech. However much a young lady might know herself to be a chess piece, to be wielded on the board of the marriage market, in appearances and speech at least she must pretend to an ingenuous naiveté, speaking of marriage in terms of romance and poetry and flowers. It was a cruel game to play with the girls, Anna sometimes thought, to enforce this doublethink and doublespeech on them, so that sometimes they must doubt their own mind and thoughts.


	9. Chapter 9

‘Oh, Anna, don’t play dumb with me,’ Miss Sarah declared, seizing the brush herself and taking an athletic stride to the mirror. She admired herself intently as she took sweeping strokes through her blonde curls. ‘Not bad, still quite fair … but not getting any younger, either.’

‘Miss, you’re nothing but a girl! What are you talking about?’ Anna protested, unfolding Miss Sarah’s nightgown.

Miss Sarah sat down on the bed and played pat-a-cake with her knees, a ruminative expression on her face. ‘A girl turns into a woman fast, Annie. And soon enough she turns the corner. I’m nearly twenty, now. A woman turns into an old maid fast.’

Anna was troubled. ‘You shouldn’t worry about these things, Miss. You’ll see, a grand man could come along any day now, you never know what the new day’ll bring…’

Miss Sarah swung her legs up onto the bed. ‘Oh, you’re right, Anna! In fact, I think he has.’ Judging by the look on her face she was ruminating some more. ‘Yes, I quite possibly think he has…’

Intrigued, Anna paused in her sorting and tidying. ‘Really, Miss? Someone new?’


	10. Chapter 10

Miss Sarah smiled at her, a look of cheeky delight on her face. ‘Yes. The Fairfields brought him along -- their grand cousin from London, the one they’re forever exasperatingly boasting about. I had thought him a mere fevered figment of their imaginations! But no, there he was, large as life. And much more handsome than they’d said…’

Anna laughed as she leaned to the linen basket to deposit the pile of folded items ready for laundry. ‘And did you dance with him, miss?’

‘Twice,’ Miss Sarah said proudly. ‘And he only danced otherwise with his cousins and two other girls -- Gwen Groundsells and old Mary Peabody, who hardly counts she’s so old. Oh don’t look at me like that, Anna! It’s true. She’s practically thirty and everybody says ‘Poor Mary’ whenever they speak of her. It’s horrible to be left as a burden on your family with no house or children or man of your own. And it won’t happen to me!’

She pulled the covers over herself, and, smiling, caught Anna's hand as Anna passed her bed in her last pass about the room. ‘Nor to you, Anna - nor to you. You’re a pretty thing, Anna -- where’s your young man, then? When is he going to come along? You know that my brother’s valet has an eye for you, don’t you?’ She burst out laughing at Anna’s expression. ‘Oh, you do know it then - and you aren’t impressed, I can see!’


	11. Chapter 11

Anna pursed her lips together. ‘I don’t know what you mean, miss,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of hot milk bringing up to help you sleep?’

‘No, I’m very well as I am - very happy,’ Miss Sarah assured her, laughing. ‘Leave me to my dreams of my husband to be, my dear Hon. Mr Crawley, Annie - you secretive old thing!’

Her laughter followed Anna out of the chamber, and Anna smiled to hear it. As she shouldered the laundry down to the basement, she thought briefly that a funny, fair-tempered mistress was a very dear thing to have, and something to be thankful for.


	12. Chapter 12

Sunday afternoon freedom made Anna want to embrace the whole world. Church done with for the day, the sun shining over Farmer Ward’s fields, all the whole world ripe for the plucking, it seemed.

And she’d made full use of it, gone picknicking with Zoe and Rosie from the village, walked the length of the lake, tatted and tattled with the girls.

But now the joyful portion of her free afternoon was over, and it was time to go visit her mother. Just to suit her mood, the clouds above started blackening as she headed over the footbridge to Squire Heathmill’s grim red lump of a country house. She just made it to the servants’ door in time to escape more than a few big wet splotches of raindrops dampening her pretty mary-blue cast-off gown.


	13. Chapter 13

Mumma was waiting and greeted her fondly as ever. There was no lack of love between them, that was not the problem and never had been. They had the kitchen to themselves, as both Squire Heathmill’s man and the general maid had their own half-days, and the gardener and his boy were out at the lodge.

Mumma set her down with a mug of tea from the big brown pot and patted her head as she drank it. ‘How’s your week been, my girl? They treating you right up at the big house?’

‘I’m happy there, Mumma,’ Anna said, smiling dutifully. ‘Miss Sarah’s a sweet girl, and the lord and lady don’t trouble me overmuch -- I’ve few enough dealings with them.’

Mumma sniffed and poured herself a cup. ‘A good thing too from all I’ve heard. That Lady Em’s a tartar, old Joe’s wife says.’

‘Well, she’s given me no grief so far,’ Anna said. ‘It’s a good position, I’m not looking for any trouble. I’m grateful to you for helping me get in there, Mumma.’

Mumma patted her hand. ‘You’re my only dear girl -- I’ll always be looking out for you, my darling. It’s just pity enough that getting you a decent place in a respectable house is the best I could do for you. Now if you’d had your rights--‘


	14. Chapter 14

Anna shivered, but controlled her expression. Here it came, as usual…

‘Mumma,’ she interrupted, ‘do you know, I think Miss Sarah might be on the way to an engagement -- just possibly! She’s been to two dances so far and danced with this Mr Crawley -- and sat with him and fed him a peach at the church picnic, apparently, too! Now don’t tell anyone, will you…’

And that was that -- Mumma safely diverted, for the time being at least. She was off and running on the subject of their betters, who was making a marriage with whom, who was no better than she should be, who was on his deathbed and who had a ‘little visitor’ on the way. It was absorbing, and it was fun, but it didn’t keep them derailed permanently.


	15. Chapter 15

Mumma reached out and patted her hand -- after an especially juicy tale of the nocturnal comings and goings during a house-party at her friend Mrs Sussin’s gentleman’s house. And she said, ‘Anna dear, I’ve been thinking -- perhaps I’ve short-changed you. I’ve always felt I’ve done the best I could for you, given the circumstances. But maybe I’ve been too selfish. Now I have a little money put aside, and you’re still young! You may be nineteen, but you could pass for sixteen easy, love. I could send you off to a ladies’ finishing school -- there’s a place I know in Belgium. And with the right contacts you’d meet there, you could get yourself a gentleman for a husband –- or a parson or a doctor, at the least. He need never know that your old Mumma’s housekeeper to a country gentleman--‘

‘Mumma, mumma,’ Anna interrupted. ‘No. Stop. Please stop. Mumma, I’m happy where I am. You gave me the best life and the best start any girl could have. And I’m truly grateful to you. I don’t need anything else.’

Mumma gazed at her, buxom and still bonny despite her years, in her Sunday best blue dress. ‘Well, I don’t rightly know about that, my darling. It still seems like something to consider. For it’s not something that can be argued -- considering who your father is, you haven’t got your rights. And for all that ladies’ maid is a nice position, and respected everywhere -- it’s not what you should have, and should have been, if you’d had your rights.’


	16. Chapter 16

Anna straightened up, and trembled a little. ‘Mumma, I make no complaints. I’m happy with my lot. And mumma -- Daddy was my father. I don’t care what the facts of the matter are -- and you’ve still never told me, not really. But he fed me. He clothed me, and he paid for my education and he loved me and I loved him. That’s all I need to know. He was my Daddy, Mumma. And I shall never forget that, not as long as I shall live.’

Now Anna regretted her frankness, for the tears began to pour out of her eyes, and out of her Mumma’s, too. Mumma came round the table and embraced her, and she felt both angry and heart-torn together. She hugged Mumma back, though -- for any one of them might be taken any night, and no soul knew what the future held. What use in holding any grudge? Better to forgive before you were ready, rather than withhold forgiveness for the right moment, and have that opportunity taken away from you.


	17. Chapter 17

‘Well, maybe you’re right, girl,’ Mumma conceded, wiping her eyes and resuming her seat on the other side of the big kitchen table. ‘Your Daddy was a Prince among men -- I don’t care if he never rose above kitchen gardener, it’s the truth. And more praise to you for recognising it. Still -- my darling, when all is said and done, your father -- the man whose -- urges -- led to your presence here on this earth -- he was a gentleman, my darling. Or so far as that word is defined, in this world, Anna. He wasn’t a man like your Daddy -- in a just world, he would have cleaned your Daddy’s boots. But a just world, that’s not the world we live in. And I can’t help feeling -- feeling that you ought to be living the life that your father’s daughter is entitled to.’

And so it went, the old refrain, for the next half-hour of Anna’s visit. She was glad to escape back into the rain in the end, bearing a borrowed umbrella and heading back to an evening’s work. So it had been for as long as Mumma had considered her of an age fit to hear the ‘truth’ of her origins -- around twelve or thirteen, that is. Till then she’d had no idea that Daddy -- who had died when she was nine years old -- hadn’t been her real father. She still sometimes doubted it. Even if her mother was telling the truth about that much, though, and not fantasizing and dreaming a romantic past that had never existed, Anna thought her tales of a noble ‘suitor’ more than somewhat unlikely. More likely a passing itinerant pedlar, she thought a little uncharitably, or the blacksmith’s boy. Word was -- little though she heard of it, people keeping their mouths charitably shut around her as Molly’s daughter -- that Mumma had been a wild one once upon a time, for all her respectable exterior in these latter days. Lucky enough that she’d found Daddy, and settled down to a respectable life as a country gentleman’s housekeeper. Not so lucky that her romantic heart still spun tales and craved excitement, these days of a vicarious kind, and longed to see her only child a fine lady living a life of grace and ease. Still. Mumma, she reminded herself, had a generous heart, even in her failings. She had friends enough whose mammas would grudge them the littlest trace of ease and pleasure, still less wish them a whole world of it. Mumma was, after all, the only Mumma she was ever likely to have, and lucky to have her indeed.


	18. Chapter 18

Back at the big house and resuming her duties, Mrs Hepple tracked her down and pounced as she was busy pressing some pretty lace collars. Busy with those, and also thinking about whether cross-stitch or darn-fashion would be better for repairs to Miss Sarah’s fine new stockings, ruined in a merry, precarious leap across a stream during the picnic she’d attended at the weekend.

‘I’ve a job for you, my dear. Now I know it’s not a normal part of your duties, but you’ve always been so helpful and it would be very much appreciated…’

Anna’s heart sank. Very much appreciated favours, in the hands of Mrs Hepple, tended to become taken-for-granted duties in a very short space of time.

What Mrs Hepple wanted, it turned out, in the absence of any housemaid due to two cases of chickenpox and one sick father, was for her to do double duty in place of one of them. Well, well, fair enough, Anna thought. Her place here was secure enough, and the job might prove amusing. For her assistance was wanted during afternoon tea the next day, and that would give her an opportunity to see the famed Mr Crawley for herself, instead of through the narration of Miss Sarah. And for that reward, and the satisfaction of her curiosity, temporary demotion was a price she was happy to pay.


	19. Chapter 19

Fitting herself into Gladys’s uniform was a damn nuisance, as Gladys was a buxom girl, and her own hastily pinned and resewn refit was too quick a job to be entirely comfortable. But she looked presentable enough, and manhandling the fine china as she prepared the tea-table for milady’s fine guests, Mrs Hepple gave her a nod of approval. ‘You grace the uniform, Anna. If you weren’t already a ladies’ maid, I’d take you on tomorrow. Certainly in preference to Gladys, the little malingerer that she is…’

Anna privately wondered how one could feign chickenpox, especially a case diagnosed by good Dr Thorpe, but she was too busy to mull it over further. Instead she grasped the tea tray and made for the morning room.

The old oak door was a pesky thing, heavy as hell and creaky as an old tree, but, sweating slightly, she managed to get it open with the appearance of grace in the absence of a hale and healthy footman. (They’d gone down with the bug too). Both Miss Sarah and the old dame, her mamma, smiled approvingly as she made her way in, but the two young ladies taking tea -- Mr Crawley's fancy upper-crust cousins, and known to Anna a little by sight and reputation -- eyed her incuriously and carried on their conversation. The gentleman himself was sitting facing the windows, away from her. Anna only got a glimpse of him as she placed the tray on the morning room table and turned to pour the tea, stealing a crafty look. And she managed to refrain from choking, just about.


	20. Chapter 20

_Well well, Anna,_ she thought. It was the apricot-stealer-apprehender -- the man with the keen and satirical eye, who’d caught her up to no good, when as a high-and-mighty ladies maid in the grandest house in the county, she should have known better, much better. Oh dear oh _Lord_.

Well, well. All would be well, she thought. Just as long as he didn’t _turn around._

Of course that was the point at which he turned around, and took a good look at her.

At that point Anna thanked the Lord for a good drilling from Miss Naylor, the village schoolmistress, on ladylike behaviour for non-ladies. Which included remaining unflappable no matter what the circumstances. Under fire, ladies, she had always decreed, is _not_ the time to fall apart. That is what you do in the privacy of your own room. Under fire, that is the time when you _rise to the occasion!_

So Anna just kept on laying napkins and arranging cake-stands. Let the chips fall where they may, she thought, no-one, not even Heppster, can beat me when it comes to arrangement of a cake-stand and a nosegay. Miss Naylor always said I had more artistic sense than any pupil she’d ever had…


	21. Chapter 21

She waited, back turned and busy enough, for the comment, the snicker, the murmurs to his cousins or -- horrors! -- to Miss Sarah. A word to milady she couldn’t even conceive of -- what would she do thrown out the door without a reference?

But all she heard was a pleasant, deep masculine voice refer to a play he’d recently seen staged in London, and what did the ladies think? Had they read it, seen the reviews?

Anna had read the reviews. Strangely, rather than panicking and inwardly raving on her way back down the back stairs, all she could do was think about those reviews. About the play, and about him -- Matthew Crawley -- Matthew, as he was to Miss Sarah now -- attending it. In his bright, bright, shining metropolitan world.

Sometimes she cursed her life, and without even being able to really say why.


End file.
